


The trouble with remembering is that it's that much harder to forget

by CryMeARiverSong



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Candlenights, Family Fluff, Feelings, i guess a bit of angst, secretsantataz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 12:43:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryMeARiverSong/pseuds/CryMeARiverSong
Summary: After the Hunger is defeated, everything goes back to normal, right?Taako hosts a Candlenights celebration at the end of the year and everyone's trying their best to be happy.It works for the most part, but Magnus can't help but remember what they lost.





	The trouble with remembering is that it's that much harder to forget

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for @kerfuffleoftails on tumblr as a part of the TAZ secret santa 2017! I really enjoyed writing this for you and I hope you like it, even if I'm not nearly as good as a lot of the amazing people involved in this year's gift exchange.

Taako hosts the first Candlenights post-story and song. He claims it’s because his kitchen is the only one worthy of his culinary skill, and everyone kinda knows he’d never admit that having all of his friends and family in his home gives him a warm feeling he hadn’t felt since the Starblaster.

Magnus shows up a little late but apologises by thrusting a sack of carefully crafted and personalised Candlenights gifts onto the coffee table and handing them out one by one. Angus almost cries over his new set of hand-crafted Dragonchess pieces and Lucretia smiles when she receives another wooden duck carved in her image. Merle laughs heartily when he unwraps a half-scale of himself posed in his signature interpretive jazz stance, while Mavis and mookie mock-gag at the image of their father in his tight fitting dance costume. Taako gives Magnus an elaborate eye-roll when he opens his gift, a dark, polished pine ring inlaid with pink tourmaline and perfect for proposing to a certain undead bounty-hunter, and Magnus wonders if his hint had been too subtle.

When Taako brings out the first course everyone digs in, Mookie quite literally plunging into the mashed potato with his hands and scooping lumps of it into his open mouth. Taako’s a little terse with Lucretia when she asks for the pepper - “don’t keep her from the salt for too long, Lucretia, he might never forgive you,”- , but he invited her into his  _ house _ , so Magnus is happy their relationship is in recovery. 

Desert is a tower of puff pastry, chocolate, and cream, and Magnus laughs as Angus meekly tells Taako he can’t finish what he put on his plate, claiming that his eyes were bigger than his stomach and he has only the stomach of a small boy, sir. Taako pretends to chastise his pseudo-son for being wasteful but Magnus sees the way his features melt into pride and love as soon as Angus’s back is turned.

Overall, the party is fun. Magnus is happy when his family is happy, and judging from the smiles and laughter that fill Taako’s enormous and elaborately festive living room, everyone is full of Candlenights cheer. 

The night gets darker, and the drinks keep flowing, and the living room becomes a dance floor. Magnus dances for a little bit, shaking and shimmying to the beat of the fantasy radio, but after a while, Barry sits down at the grand piano Taako claimed to purchase simply for the aesthetic and not at all because he loves listening to his family play, and Lup conjures a violin out of Pan-knows-where. They play the same song they played at the Legato Conservatory, and it’s just as beautiful now as it was then. 

Merle’s dancing with Mavis standing on his feet and holding his hands and Angus is attempting (and failing) to teach Mookie the steps to some complicated waltz he must have read about in one of those giant books that Taako stocked his library with. Magnus watches Taako pull Kravitz into a close embrace and then they’re swaying slowly, and Magnus can’t help but grin when he spots the ring on Kravitz’s finger. 

Carey and Killian occupy a single armchair, curled into one another and talking softly, Avi’s passed out in the corner hugging a decorative cushion and a bottle of whiskey. Davenport didn’t come but he sent a postcard from a town that had been renamed in his honour post-story and song. Lucretia must have slipped away quietly at some point, and Magnus thinks she might have had the right idea. 

 

It’s snowing outside, and although it’s pretty quiet out Magnus’s ears perk up at the sound of something distant. A familiar hum, one he hasn’t heard since story and song. There’s a soft glow in the darkness ahead, and it doesn’t look like any of the Candlenights decorations Neverwinter has collected over the holiday month, rather it’s something moving, floating. 

He follows it, one hand on the knife that he can’t yet bring himself to remove from his belt. It stays just outside his line of sight, around corners and behind fences, but he hears the hum, soft and encouraging. 

There’s something within him that  _ knows _ and when he finally rounds the corner he’s face to face with the Voidfish, plural. Junior’s bobbing mid air just slightly in front of Fisher, and he realises that Junior’s the one who led him here, Fisher’s far too big to fit through the alleys and side-streets of Neverwinter that led him to the courtyard they’re in now, the one that’s otherwise deserted. 

Then they begin to hum in unison, and it fills the night air so beautifully that it takes Magnus a little while to register that he’s crying. 

 

Because it’s Johann’s song. The one he played them in the elevator the first time they met. 

 

When they’re done, Fisher extends a tendril, because Magnus is crying and Candlenights is about being happy, and Fisher’s confused. But Magnus tells them, it’s okay, that was wonderful, thank you so much, they’re happy tears.

And then Magnus feels something by his leg, and he thinks it’s Junior’s tendril, but then he hears a sniff, and a bark, and he looks down, and there’s a dog. It looks sad, scrawny and beat up, its grey fur missing in patches and matted in others, but it’s looking in awe at the Voidfish and Magnus realises this dog has been listening the whole time, silently appreciating Johann’s song in the dark, on Candlenights. 

He leans down to pet the dog, and it stiffens a little, so he leans back and whispers something comforting, soothing it. He sits himself down and talks to this dog, just letting out all the feelings he’s been feeling that he couldn’t bring up around his family because they were  _ so happy _ .

He talks to the dog for what feels like hours, and when he looks up, Fisher and Junior are gone. He’s alone with a dog under the lamplight, and he’s happy. He talks to the dog some more, and he tells him about Johann, about how he was so brave and so good and so selfless and all he wanted was to be remembered, and then it hits him. 

He asks the dog how he would feel being named after the greatest violinist ever. 

**Author's Note:**

> So that was a lil bit angstier than I originally intended but oh well y'know. My writing style is wack as hell in this also so idk how it reads to y'all but I'm not entirely happy with it, my apologies to @kerfuffleoftails for the sub-par gift I promise I did try my best! Thanks for the read pals, y'all are the greatest! 
> 
> Merry Candlenights!


End file.
